Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Good Grief!"Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...Have you no sense of decency sir? At long last, have you no sense of decency?" (army lawyer Mr. Welch to Joseph McCarthy)

House Republicans voted to change their rules today to allow members indicted for a felony to remain in a leadership post.

How could any reasonable person ever think this was good idea?!

And in the list of other things the Republicans have done lately that suck:

Here's what Republicans of conscience have to understand about the machinations of Karl Rove and company. Fear isn't some emotion that can be easily bottled back up after it's been -- viciously -- unleashed. It isn't a once-every-four-years vehicle that can be wheeled out for a few months, then stowed back in the garage to be retooled for the next election cycle. Encouraging fundamentalist preachers to pound their pulpits and inveigh against gay people has consequences. It puts men and women in communities across this country at personal and professional risk. There's nothing more despicable than creating a phony political issue (just how many gay couples are clamoring for marriage certificates in the state of Ohio, anyhow?) and preying on people's prejudices.
-snip-"Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid," Lincoln wrote in the years leading up to the Civil War. "As a nation, we began by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except Negroes.' When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.' When it comes to this, I shall prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy."

There are a lot of Republicans troubled by their party's exploitation of contemporary know-nothingism. You know who you are. And before your party's degeneracy is complete, you ought to do something about it. Because camouflaging the fear and loathing of gay people as "moral values" isn't the base alloy of hypocrisy. It's hypocrisy itself.

And in slightly better news, here's yet another reason to consider moving to DC: "The District of Columbia ranks ahead of all 50 states in women's median wage..."

And lastly, some musings on charity. Janet Poppendieck says, "The resurgence of charity is at once a symptom and a cause of our society's failure to face up to and deal with the erosion of equality...It is symptomatic of a pervasive despair about actually solving problems that has turned us toward ways of managing them..." I was thinking about this quote because I received an e-mail at work today encouraging me to donate through the federal charitable collection thing that's happening right now. I forget what it's actually called. It's an umbrella set up, where you donate through your federal employer and designate which charity you want it to go to. Anyway, despite the fact that there are tons of charities to choose from, many of which I really like and respect, and would donate to on my own, I couldn't bring myself to do it through the government. Maybe that's silly.

2 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, the only argument I've heard that holds any credency is this:

Anyone, Republican or otherwise, is innocent until proven guilty. An indictment is not the same thing as being proven guilty of a crime, and in many areas with publically-elected attorney generals, its not unthinkable that an indictment could be constructed for purely political purposes. So, it seems unfair that one would have to give up leadership posts because of partisan B.S.

However, it seems silly that'd they'd be doing all this over someone who's so clearly guilty of the crime he's being accused of.

True. And I found out that the Dems have had an identical rule for years, which makes us rather hypocritcal. Still, if it really were based on the whole innocent until proven guilty idea, why would there be the need to change it now? Previously they've been using their stricter rule as yet another example of how they hold the moral high ground to Dems.